Here is how I started my day of teaching: an 18-year-old boy gave a speech attacking the idea of places/schools having transgender bathrooms. I was with him for about the first 30 seconds, and then it all took a turn for the worse.
All of a sudden, the whole class was arguing about bathrooms. The boys were pissed that the girls have stalls in their bathrooms, and the girls were pissed that the boys kept talking about urinals. And then the original speaker started ranting about how if a transgender person went into a bathroom with his small child, and his child was made to feel uncomfortable, he would "beat the shit" out of that person. Ultimately, he said, if you can't go into the bathroom where you "biologically belong", you should hold it until school is over.
Then it got worse ...
The boys and girls argued for 10 minutes about which gender is more disgusting in a bathroom. The boys said their bathrooms were worse because (apparently) boys pee all over everything and leave pubes everywhere, and the girls proclaimed that (apparently) girls bleed all over everything. What. The. Hell. ?? I literally tried to redirect the conversation several times, but they were all hell-bent on talking about toilets - something which I NEVER want to talk about, especially before 9:00 am.
The final straw was when the original speaker (guy) said that he and his friends periodically redirect their streams onto each other, because it's fun. My life is a surrealistic movie.
The very next period (study hall), I listened to a girl talk about her recent stay in a mental hospital. I helped a boy write an apology letter for buying an illegal gun. I heard why another boy had been suspended for buying a bong in the school bathroom. Then another boy told me about all the girls who send him naked pictures via snapchat - at which point I explained the laws about possession and distribution of child pornography.
I don't even know what else to say. High school students might be a different species entirely.
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